As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Monday, February 16, 2009

Wolverines!!!

Only through the lens of Republican Party up-is-downism can a "success" like Eric Cantor be studying the "success" of Newt Gingrich:

As Republican whip, Mr. Cantor succeeded again on Friday in denying the White House the support of a single House Republican on the stimulus bill. That was a calculated challenge to the president, who, in his weekly address on Saturday, hailed the bill as “an ambitious plan at a time we badly need it.”

Mr. Cantor said he had studied Mr. Gingrich’s years in power and had been in regular touch with him as he sought to help his party find the right tone and message. Indeed, one of Mr. Gingrich’s leading victories in unifying his caucus against Mr. Clinton’s package of tax increases to balance the budget in 1993 has been echoed in the events of the last few weeks.

“I talk to Newt on a regular basis because he was in the position that we are in: in the extreme minority,” he said.

Newt Gingrich went from the Republican Revolution to having to resign as Speaker within four years, losing a Presidential election and a midterm in the process. The long-term result was an ideological retrenchment in the Republican Party that has confined them to regional backwaters. This is the MODEL for GOP success. And so they marched into the slaughter, allowing themselves to vote in unity against the largest middle-class tax cut in American history, and to go all early '80s with maybe the most pathetic backslapping-for-nothing video in the history of modern politics. As Jason Zengerle notes:

[I]t's basically a litany of every tired, failed GOP buzzword (from ACORN to golf carts), all set to the tune of ... Aerosmith.... [Y]ears from now, when historians are trying to sort out what went so terribly wrong with conservatism in the early twenty-first century, I really hope this little video doesn't get overlooked.

That SNL skit this weekend wasn't all that funny, but it did capture the conservative echo chamber pretty well. They are too busy high-fiving to see the rest of the country laughing at them.